CONCLUSION
Since the Bible is the final authority, we should look to it as the final authenticating and inerrant source of all spiritual truth. If it says Sacred Tradition is valid, fine. But if it doesn't, then I will trust the Bible alone. Since the Bible does not approve of the Catholic Church's Sacred Tradition, along with its inventions of prayer to Mary, prayer to the saints, indulgences, penance, purgatory, etc., then neither should Christians.
I haven't read the rest of the thread yet and so if someone else already covered this I apologize.
I reject sola scriptura first of all on the basis that it's demonstrably false. It really doesn't matter how well a proposition appears to be supported with Bible verses or logic or reason if you can simply test the idea and the test shows the idea to be false. If it's demonstrably false, it's false and no amount of arguing changes that (if it walks like a duck...).
Sola Scriptura is demonstrably false in that people do not agree on what the bible actually teaches. The argument between the Catholic Church and the protestant denominations is not on how much of the Bible is actually necessary to actually practice (as it is in the different branches of Judaism) but what the Bible itself actually means. And so an outside authority is needed to say, "the bible means this, not that."
I reject it also because it is, by necessity, never actually practiced. Whenever a new protestant church starts, it becomes apparent very early on that everyone being their own authority on how to interpret the Bible is a recipe for chaos and so the 'elders' of the church decide on church doctrine based on their own interpretation. The question is who appointed them to be the interpreters of the Bible? The Catholics claim apostolic succession. That is Jesus appointed the 12 apostles and they in turn appointed the next generation of disciples. The protestants simple appointed themselves.
I also reject it on historical grounds. Jesus started the Church with an oral sacred tradition, not by writing a New Testament (he left that for his followers). And so to discount Oral sacred tradition is to discount the very life and work of Christ himself.
Also, for the first 400 years of Christianity, there was no canonized New Testament. When the New Testament people talk of the scriptures, they are referring to the Old Testament. There was no New Testament to refer to. The New Testament wasn't canonized until the 390's.
Then, for the next 12 hundred years, every copy of the bible had to be hand copied and so numerous copies of it were not available for the masses. Also, most of the population in most places were illiterate. And so the people didn't have access to the Bible and couldn't read it even if they did. And so people learned by being taught by the church.
I also reject it because the logical problem. Sola scriptura assumes a canon to already exist. But a canon necessitates a Church to create the canon, both in writing the books and in editing in deciding which books to keep and which to throw out. No church means no scriptures. And so Sola Scriptura is a logical impossibility.
I reject it because it of the life of Christ himself. (Jesus was born about 1500 years before the invention of the printing press. This fact alone should be enough to discount Sola Scriptura).
During the life of Christ, Judaism was divided into many different factions. The two main factions were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the keepers and the teachers of the law. They believed that the Torah was given in two parts, the Oral Torah and the written Torah. They also believed in the entire Old Testament (they were the ones that canonized it just prior to the life of Jesus.
This was the sect that Jesus came out of (Evidenced in the gospels in that Jesus is referred to as rabbi. This is not a generic term for Teacher but a professional title. Also, the Talmud records accounts of Jesus' days as a student rabbi (it paints a less than flattering portrait of Jesus as it was written by people that were not his followers.) Also Jesus referenced books of the OT other than the Torah which the Sadducees didn't believe in.)
The Sadducees were the Priests and they controlled the Temple cult. They were the Sola Scripturists of the day, believing only in the written Torah, not the oral Torah and none of the books of the OT outside of the Torah. They were ones that were responsible for having Christ put to death.
The Pharisee sect has survived to the modern day while the sola scriptura believing Sadducees sect died out with the desctruction of Israel in AD 70. I think it is reasonable to conclude that it is a clue both that Jesus was a pharisee and not a Sadduccee and that the Pharisees survived but the Sadducees didn't. I also think it is a clue that it was the Sola Scripturists of his day that were responsible for his execution.
Finally, I reject Sola Scriptura on the basis that it is not scripturally supported. This do this, all I have to do is produce one verse that demonstrates that sola scriptura is false and that is quite easy because there are numerous verses.
One obvious example is Acts 8:26-31
"26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
"How can I [understand this] unless someone explains it to me?" This shoots the argument for Sola Scriptura right in the head.
But there are more. Another obvious example:
1 Cor 11:2
" 2 Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the
traditions, just as I delivered them to you." (emphasis added)
"Hold firmly to the traditions" does not sound like Paul was a Sola Scripturist.
